Offences Against the Person Act 1861

David Ruffley: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many offences were recorded under the Offences Against the Person Act 1861 in each year since 2002, broken down by offence; and what percentage of these offences  (a) resulted in court proceedings against suspected perpetrators,  (b) led to a conviction and  (c) resulted in a sanction detection.

Vernon Coaker: The information is not available in the form requested.
	Table 1 gives the number of offences recorded under the Offences Against the Person Act 1861 since 2002 that are separately identifiable within police recorded crime statistics. It also gives the number of offences detected by means of a sanction detection. Table 2 shows the numbers of defendants proceeded against and found guilty at all courts for the years 2002 to 2006, and is taken from the court proceedings database held by the Office for Criminal Justice Reform.
	The figures given in the table on court proceedings relate to persons for whom these offences were the principal offences for which they were dealt with. When a defendant has been found guilty of two or more offences, the offence selected is the one for which the heaviest penalty is imposed. Where the same disposal is imposed for two or more offences, the offence selected is the offence for which the statutory maximum penalty is the most severe.
	Recorded crime and court proceedings statistics are from two different databases and recorded in quite different ways. Recorded crime data is provided on a financial year basis and counts offences whereas court proceedings data are on a calendar year basis and count offenders. Therefore, these two separate data-sets are not directly comparable.
	
		
			  Table 1: offences recorded under the Sexual Offences Act 2003 and detected by means of a sanction detection 
			2004-05  2005-06  2006-07 
			   Offence  Number of offences  Number of sanction detections  Number of offences  Number of sanction detections  Number of offences  Number of sanction detections 
			 17A Sexual assault on a male aged 13 and over 1,316 297 1,428 370 1,450 397 
			 17B Sexual assault on a male child under 13 1,227 291 1,394 456 1,237 441 
			 19C Rape of a female aged 16 and over 8,192 1,578 8,725 1,843 8,228 1,744 
			 19D Rape of a female child under 16 3,014 868 3,153 932 2,853 805 
			 19E Rape of a female child under 13 970 276 1,388 496 1,524 553 
			 19F Rape of a male aged 16 and over 444 46 438 70 413 58 
			 19G Rape of a male child under 16 322 99 292 116 261 83 
			 19H Rape of a male child under 13 297 94 364 129 458 148 
			 20A Sexual assault on a female aged 13 and over 15,087 2,967 17,158 4,413 16,887 4,355 
			 20B Sexual assault on a female child under 13 4,391 1,151 4,647 1,632 4,249 1,494 
			 21 Sexual activity involving child under 13 1,510 405 1,950 629 1,937 636 
			 22B Sexual activity involving child under 16 2,546 696 3,283 1,124 3,210 1,058 
			 22A Causing sexual activity without consent(1) 239 57 744 596 224 58 
			 23 Incest or familial sexual offences 713 178 966 330 1,344 406 
			 70 Sexual activity etc. with a person with a mental disorder 104 11 139 29 163 43 
			 71 Abuse of children through prostitution and pornography 99 28 124 84 101 51 
			 72 Trafficking for sexual exploitation 21 8 33 23 43 22 
			 73 Abuse of position of trust of a sexual nature 682 562 463 385 361 265 
			 88A Sexual grooming 186 49 237 101 322 125 
			 88B Other miscellaneous sexual offences 11,593 2,217 11,363 2,769 10,212 2,652 
			 (1) The increase in 2005-06 was accounted for by a large number of offences that were dealt with by the Norfolk constabulary. 
		
	
	
		
			  Table 2: number of defendants proceeded against at magistrates courts and found guilty at all courts for abandoning children and concealment of birth, England and Wales 2002-06( 1,2) 
			2002  2003  2004  2005  2006 
			   Offence  Proceeded against  Found guilty  Proceeded against  Found guilty  Proceeded against  Found guilty  Proceeded against  Found guilty  Proceeded against  Found guilty 
			 12 Abandoning children aged under two years 4 — 9 1 4 — 4 — 4 2 
			 15 Concealment of birth — — 4 4 1 — 3 3 3 3 
			 (1) These data are on the principal offence basis. (2) Every effort is made to ensure that the figures presented are accurate and complete. However, it is important to note that these data have been extracted from large administrative data systems generated by the courts and police forces. As a consequence, care should be taken to ensure data collection processes and their inevitable limitations are taken into account when those data are used.